My pupils dilate. I sit tracing the lines which lace my pale hands, they are cut deep into my palms. Gashes. Not from any knife, though they are shocks of blood red. They have more lines than everyone elses palms. There is no distinction between love lines, life lines and head lines, they are one seething mass. Writhing. Contorted. Moving like creases in silk, rippling across the surface of my skin. They are intertwined with lines which have no place, no purpose, no name, no future.

   "Moisturize", someone once said, but my hands aren't dry or wrinkled. They are young hands with palms too old, too lived. There is a star in the centre of my left hand where the lines link, a pentagram, a sign of protection from death and smashed mirrors.

   I have a mole on my wedding finger. It may be a freckle, who knows the diference? I thought that every lone speck was a mole, and freckles were only for faces, groups or sunny afternoons. Or are moles only moles if they are risen and buldge above the surface?

   This mole isn't risen and is the same shade as chestnut shells, the shape of a perfect heart. Not pumping and beating, alive and ugly, but an orderly love heart. It used to have a pale crack down the middle. Cut in two. It has nearly vanished from view, healing. No longer broken, just battered. Bruised. Used. Abused. Dirty.Not like the breasts of a virgin.

   Apparently I am twenty three with the breasts of a girl born bad, tainted, dirty. They give away my inner uglyness, my true age. Or so said the drunk chinese man on the 1:30 am bus home, as drunk as me, as I skinned up on the back seat. Clinging to coordination with my fingertips.